


Where is Your Rider?

by SandrC



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:15:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28382322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: The spirit of death speaks kindly to Ruby Rocks.
Kudos: 3





	Where is Your Rider?

**Author's Note:**

> This was something j started around the time of the battle on the Colby and never finished but later found in my drafts and went "oho? this actually fucking rocks and I like it!" and then worked to finish it.
> 
> It's just Death talking to Ruby, though she cannot hear them. Gentle, unassuming. Apologetic.
> 
> Anyway it does spoil all the way to the finale so heads up. The rating is me being like...careful. it's probably unnecessary but hey...
> 
> Anyway, pls enjoy.

Quietly, like a thief, I steal.

You cannot stop me, as much as you would like, little one. You must simply make do with what you can steal back.

It's not so bad. _After_ , that is. The longing—watching, wanting to hold, waiting for the day everyone else comes here as well—that is excruciating. Pain would be a _mercy_. Death... _well_...that's the rub of it.

That aside, little one, listen now and hear the anguished cry.

A man, dashed against the walls of a church he pretended to serve, a companion and friend in his arms. A small comfort in his final moments, bold words, cracked lips, a proud spirit. And, from within that which has been cultured in Candia, a calling. _Come home_ , it says. While they take the breath, the soul wanders. The Sweetening Path isn't just a belief. It is as real as the ground beneath your feet. The arrow in your throat. The pounding of your pulse.

 _Ah_ , but that is unfair and you cannot hear me yet. Maybe you will never hear me until long after your story is long over and peace has settled your world. One can only hope.

I am not _unkind_ , I think. I have never been told otherwise.

A man, his head, a spray, a _squeal_. This is what is wrought. And _oh_ , the red, the iron and blood. You can forge swords from the malice found here. Mongers, _the lot_.

Listen, _listen_ to the siren's song. A blade in the neck of a fool, shoved from on high. The pride alone would sink him but it is a practiced hand—one you know, like your own, this shadow—that finishes him before he hits the waves. Before _the tide_ devours him quicker than the Hungry One he so fears. Pious but _porous_. He took to the drink as a stone in a river. Down _down **down**_. But he would ruin the sanctimony of life for _this_? _Power_? Same as those before.

 _Echoes_ , little one. _Everything_ is echoing. Listen to the past and hear the future. Someone else was _very_ good at that. _Would_ have been, _will_ be, or _is_ , but she knew better than most that the riptide takes all if you fight and she spread her arms and _let go_. Wise beyond her years—she could have had _more_ if she did not believe in a better future, one that did not include her—and that is _me_ saying this to _you_. She was wise. Would have been _more_ so. But _time_ , little one. _Time_.

Even the youth are not immune to time. You _would_ know that. _Have_ known that. _Will have_ known that.

Time, _again_. I am unmoored in my knowing. I, after all, am that which takes. They call me Harvester and they are not _wrong_. Terminus, the end, so I cannot see time in the same marching line; instead content to watch the meandering path of the river from above.

Regardless _, I apologize_. I believe my dismissal of the act of linear time, in and of itself, is insensitive. You have not yet seen what I have. You have not yet experienced the end of your heart. This _will_ happen and it _will_ hurt and I am, in _every_ way that I can express, sorry that you will outlive her. She is _a gift_ , strong willed, a powerful fighter. I will take her from you and you will curse me and the very act of entropy and the laws of What Is And Is Not Fair and _you are valid_.

Those that outlive are _always_ valid in their grief.

To grieve is to _live_ , after all. A selfish act of the living, to wish that I still my blade, but I will not. I _cannot_.

Can you cease the beat of your heart at will? Can you rip the magic from your veins? _No_? It is the same.

_I digress._

And after her there will be _more_ but that will not be your concern _until it is_. Your scope is _so narrow._

Do you know _why_ I speak to _you_ _personally_? It is not out of any kind of narrative desire to dictate a story that _has been_ or _will be_ told—for time itself will mark it, the hands penning biased and bitter, the broken armies littered behind revolting the sweetened lies on paper—but because I am more a part of _your_ life than _anyone else's._

Your history, what will _become_ your history when it is finished being your _present_ , lies in my path. I am the river that winds beneath your bridge. I am the sun coating your earth. _You cannot escape me_ and _this_ is why I speak to you.

_It could have been worse._

This is fact. I have _seen_ the channel, the low trough that the river only _barely_ avoided diverting through. It would have been a wider, deeper thing that would _swallow_ the land in a flood of rapids and roaring screams.

You, your decisions and the decisions of those nearest you, kept this diversion from coming to pass. You and your kindness, your _trust_ , prevents a bloodbath. Keeps the surface of your world as pristine as it comes.

She loves you. With her first and last breaths, she _loves_ you. You are her heart and you, _hers_.

An exhalation and blood pooling in a space that exists just to the side of your perception. A young man who has seen me take and _take_ and **_take_** and is _tired_ of the weight on his soul. He feels my hands on his face and fights my grip as he fires his crossbow into the flesh of his enemies.

You are both _so brave._

And _so_ , little one, my last farewell. A grand hurrah to this, a relationship built on hate. ( _You_ hate _me_ and I do not fault you this. _I_ do not hate _you_ because I do not think I am _capable_ of doing so. There is no space for hate in me.)

I will recede—never gone, I will _never_ leave because I am eternal in the way that the Hungry Ones or the Bulb are eternal, tireless things that wait for eternity to _end_ —and you will rejoice but the ache _will not_ leave you. The holes I have carved in you and yours will not heal and _this_ will be your truth. But I will no longer be a grim spectre that haunts you and, in this way, you will make a kind of peace with me and I will be grateful.

 _Am_ grateful.


End file.
